Edgy … Maanuv Thiara as Zeyd and Aryana Ramkhalawon as Ayesha in The Funeral Director.
Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Every year the Papatango New Writing prize comes up with a bit of a cracker. Following previous winners such as Orca and Trestle, Iman Qureshi’s play tackles, with grace and dignity, the tricky subject of Islamic attitudes to same-sex relationships. It’s a play that makes a humane point without lapsing into preachiness.

Its protagonist, Ayesha, is a British Pakistani who, with her husband Zeyd, runs a Muslim funeral parlour in a bleak Midlands town. Their five-year-old marriage is already edgy because of Ayesha’s reluctance to have a child or even, it would seem, very much sex. Matters are made even worse when Ayesha and Zeyd jointly refuse to do the funeral for a young white guy’s male Muslim partner. When they find themselves sued for sexual discrimination, even Ayesha’s oldest friend, a human-rights lawyer named Janey, is loth to rush to their defence.

The weakness is that the audience is ahead of the plot and can quickly see that Ayesha’s virtual celibacy is dictated by something more than primness. But Qureshi’s great strength is that she is fair to both sides of the argument. Zeyd defends the decision not to bury the gay Muslim on both practical and religious grounds arguing that people of faith have the right to say no. It is Ayesha, however, who learns the larger lesson that nothing will ever change unless orthodoxy is challenged.

Hannah Hauer-King’s production is as swift and clean as the writing and the performances are all good. Aryana Ramkhalawon as Ayesha suggests the sadness of a woman who has long suppressed her natural instincts, and Maanuv Thiara conveys the frustration of a loving husband who is neither a domestic bully nor a religious dogmatist. Jessica Clark as Ayesha’s longtime friend and Tom Morley as the rejected client lend assured support, and the play, which recalls the case of the Belfast bakers who refused to make a cake with an explicitly gay slogan, demonstrates that issues of conscience divide communities and are incapable of easy resolution.